[jsunderland323]

I second this. I think we’re confusing cognitive dissonance with cargo culting in this article.

Cargo culting is blindly copying something without understanding the mechanistic behavior of the thing being copied. Plenty of cargo culters end up convinced after following the recipe but the planes don’t show up.

Cognitive dissonance on the other hand is about not updating your beliefs when there’s overwhelming verifiable evidence to the contrary.

I think the two can go hand in hand. Hype cycles in tech suffer from both but I think they’re distinctly different things.